NOVEL NEXT Chapter 16
I awake once again to a tap on my arm. Kara stands in front of me, the memory of what I said fresh in my mind. At least she gets a whole night to process what happened, for me it’s only been a few moments. At least she came back.
“Hey Blue, how are you feeling?” She’s put on a serious face that doesn't match the tone of her voice.
“Ok, I guess.”
“How about your injury?” She gently taps the side of my head.
“The same as yesterday. I haven’t healed much.” My mind is still a fractured, barely held together mess, but I haven’t gotten worse. I’m not sure if it’s healed at all while I was off.
“Great.” Kara steps back, shaking her head. “Monroe got his hands on a laptop from god knows where. I didn’t want to stress you out last night, but he’s been demanding for days for you to crack it open. I’ll delay him for a while longer though.”
Looks like the safety I earned from pushing myself is already over, and I didn’t even get to enjoy them. Whatever, here we go again.
“I can do it.” I definitely shouldn’t though.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You don’t have to if you don’t feel ready. Are you sure?” Concern floods both her face and her voice.
“Yes.” No.
“Blue, I’m being serious here. Don’t push yourself.”
“I’ll leave if it gets dangerous.” If I’m able to.
“Fuck. I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I? You had better come back safe, alright kid?”
“I will.” Or at least I’ll do everything I can.
“Ok.” Kara gets to work unhooking me from my stand. “Finn, Simon, get room 4 prepared. Jared, go get Monroe.”
“Yes, do that.” Jared calls out and rushes out of the room.
“I’ll try to be faster pulling you out this time.” Finn yells out while haphazardly pilling stuff onto a cart.
“Ok.” He’s not going to be able to help me. Once I get injured it’s already too late, and I work far too quickly for him to do anything. I don’t want to do this. I just want to have time to relax on my own. Finn and Simon pretend to not see tears welling in my eyes as they wheel the cart out of the room.
“You don’t have to do this.” The second I’m free Kara pulls me into a hug.
“Please, don’t. I can’t let myself believe you.”
“I’m not trying to stop you.” Kara breaks off her hug but leaves her hands on my shoulders. “I just need you to realize that this line of thinking is what almost got you killed last time.”
“Do you really think I don’t know that?” My voice came out much louder than I intended. Enough to force Kara to take a step back. “You just don’t understand.” I whisper. “You aren’t a single order away from death.”
“I’m closer than you think.” Kara mumbles under her breath before looking at me with her piercing eyes. “Alright, I guess I’d be a hypocrite if I talked you out of fighting. Ready to go?”
“Yes.”
I wipe my tears away and follow Kara out into the hallway. She leads me just next door into a small, empty concrete room. A few power outlets are embedded in the walls and a single light is built into the roof. What in the world do they need a room like this for?
Finn and Simon have already spread out a number of monitors and laptops across the floor. A couple of wires stretch out to the center of the room, just waiting to be plugged into me.
“Just got a call from Jared.” Finn begins talking as fast as he possibly can while he collects the wires in the center of the room. “Tiny Dick’s on his way, he wants this done as soon as possible. Access please.”
I move the skin plates on the back of my neck out of the way. Finn begins to plug wires in, and familiar tentacles reach into my mind. I’m lucky they’re so gentle. With the state my mind is in, any force would put me at risk of shattering.
“I’m supposed to give you a rundown now so we can get started straight away. Monroe won’t say exactly where he got this thing, but it’s foreign, and our security experts couldn’t crack it. Here, memorize this.”
Finn places a flash drive in my hand. I plug it into my wrist and find my mind flooded with articles on a dozen foreign languages and tools to translate them into english. It only takes a split second to memorize the data and hand the drive back to Finn.
“No idea what kind of security measures are on here. Just take it slow and safe, alright? Monroe wants it unlocked and left alone. He explicitly said no reading and no modifying files. So remember to delete any logs created when you do read.” Finn shoots me a wink as he walks to the front of me.
I’m glad that he knows me well, even if we haven’t spoken as much as we should have. I just have to make sure I’m still here to fix that after today.
We sit here in awkward silence for a few minutes. Even if I wanted to, I’m not sure what there is to talk about. Instead, I use these few moments of silence to relax. I rhythmically tap my fingers together. Five. Five. One. It helps keep me calm, keeps me from panicking.
All too soon the door opens. Monroe steps through with Jared close at his heels. Monroe simply stands in the corner of the room, silently staring with his arms crossed. Jared, on the other hand, walks up to me with the laptop under his arm. Though his movements look smooth and confident, his face is anything but. If even I can see his nervousness everyone else must be able to extract a hundred more details I’m missing.
“Did Finn fill you in on your mission?” His voice sounds pretty normal.
“Unlock the laptop and don’t read anything.” Or at least don’t get caught reading anything. “Just give me the laptop and let’s get this over with.”
“This is serious. I expect nothing less than success.”
Oh yeah I was just planning on failing and being shut down. I guess I have to try now that Jared is expecting me to do it.
I shouldn’t be mean. He’s just as stressed as I am, even if the only thing at risk for him is some worthless promotion.
“Just let me do my job.”
I take the laptop out of his hands and plug myself in while cutting myself off from the physical world.
Instead of the expected endless stream of code, I instantly find myself in a world that’s already been shaped into a mimicry of the physical world. Who in the world already did this? The white void that surrounds me strikes fear into the center of my mind. I can’t let it control me though. I have to do this.
I am a fragmented mess that was once my body. A swirling mess of tangled threads snake throughout the center of me. When the fragments that once were my skin begin to float away, a bundle of threads limp out to coax it back into the rough shape of me. Of course they don’t stay put, and only a few seconds later they attempt to float off again.
In front of me sits what looks like an old, but well made outhouse. A quick walk around it reveals nothing, and the front door looks like it doesn’t have a lock on it. That doesn't mean I trust it of course, breaking my way in would probably be safer. Unfortunately the wooden slats that the walls are made of are incredibly strong. I might have been able to break through if my mind was in good shape, but that doesn't help me now.
As much as I hate it, I don’t have any better ideas than trying the front door. The one good thing about my condition is that I can use only a single fragment to open the door. If it is trapped, I’ll only injure a fraction of my mind instead of all of me.
The threads at my core are just as easy to move as any other part of my body and I use them to reach out with a small chunk of my body. While keeping the fragment between my threads and the door, I pull. My threads are weak, but they’re still strong enough to slowly swing the door open.
Behind the door stands an elevator with its doors wide open, welcoming me in. I can’t say that’s what I expected to find here. I guess I have to go down?
Am I seriously considering entering into a metal chamber with no hope of escape? I guess it comes down to if I think I have a better chance in there or with Monroe.
I step inside. Only a single button sits on the wall. Fuck it, here goes nothing.
The doors behind me slide shut and the elevator begins to descend. Inches become feet which turn into miles as I’m carried ever deeper. With every passing inch I feel my connection to the physical world straining more and more. If Finn rips me out now there’s no telling how much of my mind will be left behind.
The doors finally open. In front of me lies endless sterile white hallways that stretch seemingly into infinity. Heavy metal doors sit at regular intervals, and other hallways shoot out at random, creating a maze. At least it should be impossible for me to get lost. I can just write a perfect map to one of my hard drives.
I pick a direction and begin to walk while checking every door I come across. They are all unlocked, but most of them are completely empty. The occasional room with stuff in it has only a single worthless file. A few, perhaps more interesting rooms, have collapsed into rubble. It’s impossible to tell if the destruction of these files was on purpose or accidental.
The elevator seems to be placed somewhere near the center of the maze, or at least away from any obvious edge. I try to spiral out from the elevator as best as I can. More often than I like I reach a dead end and have to retrace my steps to try a different direction.
Turn after turn, room after room I walk down the endless identical hallways. One of these rooms has to give me admin access to the computer, or at least some kind of map.
The further away from the elevator I get, the more worrying signs I find. It starts out with the occasional distant sound bouncing through the hallways. That alone would be unsettling, but it’s not long before I find signs of fights. Large gashes in the walls and floors, burn marks, surfaces that have been eaten away by some kind of acid. Small patches of fur, skin, and metal have been left at every site.
That’s weird. I’d assume I’m hearing some sort of security off in the distance, but what is it fighting? There are far too many fights for it to have been just one intruder. Maybe they’re all the results of the military trying to hack in? Some of them almost certainly are but as I walk I find hundreds of them. And that’s only in this small section of a seemingly infinite maze. I can’t imagine it’s the security somehow fighting itself, so what is in here with me?
